PMQs: It's pantomime time

It’s Christmas and MPs want to go home. Unfortunately the House sits until Thursday, and before that we have the ritual of Prime Minister’s Questions. In the dregs of the year nobody is listening, and Hon. Members feel justified in turning it into their own variety show. There was an excellent quotient of jeers and a number of entertainingly barnstorming speeches, culminating in a particularly fine performance from Stephen Pound (Lab, Ealing North), which was decreed by David Cameron to be worthy of pantomime. It was not the first reference to Christmas in an otherwise lacklustre session.

For the last few months Ed Miliband has banged the living standards drum. But it was a tricky message to trumpet after today’s unemployment figures showed joblessness is down by 99,000. It proved difficult for Miliband to make much headway, even using his chosen strategy of pointing out it’s what the jobs are and what they pay that also matters. Cameron ignored the point, of course, continuing to say how marvellous the Government was for reducing unemployment overall. It all went round in circles for a bit before Miliband gave up and started talking about living standards again.

Nobody picked up on what was undeniably the most entertaining political news item of the week: the discovery of a painting of Catherine the Great which is the spitting image of the Prime Minister in drag. The vague amusement this managed to squeeze from the internet was incomparably greater than anything proffered in the chamber. Some members attempted to pun on how it’s Christmas next week, with disastrous results. There was the Prime Minister, referring to Ed Balls: “You don’t need it to be Christmas to know when you’re sitting next to a turkey.” Ed Miliband, shortly afterwards: “That was a turkey of an answer, Mr Speaker.” These were some of the better ones.

The House quietened down for the usual handful of genuinely intelligent questions. John McDonnell (Lab, Hayes and Harlington) demanded to know what Cameron would do about the new runway at Heathrow. It was a debate on this issue which caused the illustrious Labour member to be expelled from the House in 2009 after he ran down to the floor and picked up the ceremonial mace that lies before the Speaker. Rory Stewart asked about Syrian refugees for which, sitting down, he received a hearty pat on the knee from his jovial neighbour. John Whittingdale, another Tory, extracted a solid promise from the Prime Minister to support the Ukrainian protestors as they fight for closer relations with the European Union. They might have a better appreciation of principled debate than the Leader of the Labour Party, who at one point in the main exchanges listed Cameron’s “bad predictions” for his time in No 10. The worst prediction of all? “He said he’d be good at being Prime Minister, and he’s certainly failed at that.”